The numbers in the “deal”

As I start to type this I have no idea if the “deal” that was announced earlier today will be in effect or on the trash heap. I think it’s instructive to look at the numbers in the proposed maps anyway, since they give a good idea of how much the state was willing to concede. Let’s start with Congress. From a strictly Democratic perspective, here’s how I see it:

For comparison sake, here’s my analysis of the original interim map and of the Lege-drawn map. What was originally 26-10 in favor of the GOP, then briefly became 23-13, is now either likely somewhere between 25-11 and 23-13, depending on if Rep. Quico Canseco can hold on and if Nick Lampson can win CD14. Note that this is more or less the screw-Doggett map with new Dem districts in the D/FW area and in South Texas, which if it stands might put the kibosh on Joaquin Castro’s assignment for the DCCC and would leave Roger Williams in the cold while bringing Michael Williams back into the game. Smokey Joe Barton gets a little help, Blake Farenthold no longer has to worry about a Harris County challenger, and the heir apparent to Charlie Gonzalez is up in the air.

* = Republican incumbent
+ = Not running for re-election, at least as of last report

Here’s my analysis of the interim map, in which I didn’t specify a likely number of Dem seats but estimated it to be about 60, assuming nothing horrible happened, and here’s my series of posts analyzing the Lege-drawn map: non-urban 1; non-urban 2; Travis, Bexar, El Paso; Metroplex; and Harris County. In this map, Harris County remains with 24 seats, with Hubert Vo’s district being drawn as HD136, so the so-far four-way primary in HD137 remains on. Sarah Davis and Ken Legler get some help, though the latter remains an underdog as I see it. Jimmie Don Aycock in HD54 also gets some help, while Geanie Morrison and Aaron Pena likely stay retired. As Greg noted, the more compact HD26 is gone, replaced by the snowflake-like red-hued earlier version. By my count, this map probably delivers 55 to 60 Dem seats, about what the original interim map was likely to provide; the Lege-drawn map was probably good for 55 at most. Again, while this does represent an improvement, it’s still a long way back to parity for Dems, meaning that even in conceding all this ground, the Republicans would still come out well-placed, at least to begin with.

As for the State Senate map, there’s not much to say. SD10 remains a lean-R district, SD09 is slightly redder, and three other districts were tweaked as well. The main news here is the request by State Sen. Craig Estes, whose SD30 was one of those tweaked districts, to intervene. Sen. Wendy Davis, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, did not sign on to the deal.

So looking at it strictly politically, Dems would do a little better than they were slated to do under the original legislatively-drawn maps, though not quite as well as they would have under the original court-drawn ones. These maps do fix some of the egregious problems and increase Latino opportunities a little, but potentially at the cost of Lloyd Doggett, and without addressing the question of coalition districts. That’s a big deal, and it’s likely the reason why the rest of the plaintiffs refused to sign off on Abbott’s proposal, and why the ultimate resolution of the litigation has the potential to produce maps more like the original interim ones, at least if the plaintiffs prevail. Michael Li, the man behind the great Texas Redistricting blog, wrote a sharp op-ed last week that laid the reasoning out. He focused on the claims for Davis’ SD10, for which the trial on her claims begins tomorrow, as the crux of the issue:

As urban Texas becomes more diverse — and compartmentalized neighborhoods that are the exclusive preserve of one ethnic group disappear — more and more districts like Davis’ will emerge naturally. The competitive state House seats that have arisen in recent years in places like Irving and Grand Prairie are a product of the same phenomena.

That may be why Texas Republicans have fought so hard to take apart Senate District 10 and shove its minority population into far-flung districts where forming winning coalitions is much harder if not impossible.

The crux of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s court argument has been that the only districts protected under the Voting Rights Act are districts where, unlike Senate District 10, a single minority group, by itself, controls outcomes in elections. In other words, in his view, Hispanic and African-American voters only get protected by the Voting Rights Act if they live in neatly defined ethnic barrios of the type that are becoming more and more rare in a multi-ethnic Texas.

Abbott’s argument is a one-two power grab. On the one hand, the state argues it can’t draw more African-American or Hispanic seats because the populations are too spread out across the region. Then it argues that it can fracture the coalitions that minority groups manage to forge because “coalitions” aren’t protected by voting rights laws.

Accept his argument, and Texas would be free to do what it did to Senate District 10 when it put a strip of the district where the population is more than 78 percent African-American and Latino into an Anglo-dominated district stretching past Waco.

As Li notes, the DC panel rejected the state’s claims that coalition districts were not protected, though that doesn’t mean these particular coalition districts will get redress. This is why the majority of the plaintiffs were not interested in Abbott’s “deal”: It didn’t address their issues, and they have a reasonable hope that the DC court will. If that means the primary can’t be held in April, well, they weren’t the ones that asked for a stay from SCOTUS. Unless something happens to change this calculus, I think we’re back to waiting for the DC court to rule.

UPDATE: I should note that I’m only paying attention to the 2008 numbers in these maps because any interim maps are only going to be in effect for this year. We are certain to have a new set of maps for 2014, after all of the current litigation has concluded in the federal courts, and may well have yet another set for 2016 depending on when SCOTUS does its thing. As such, I consider looking at the 2010 numbers for these maps to be even more of an academic exercise than looking at the 2008 numbers is.

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